All of these assessments sound a bit silly. I've been running PF2E twice a week since it came out and I think it was maybe 2-3 sessions at the most before we got over an initial learning curve slowdown, and the game runs incredibly smoothly. I have completed one campaign from level 1-20 with me as GM, and have three other shorter campaigns of various levels in process.
I'm not even sure where this is coming from. Maybe hypothetically it's possible to spend forty minutes learning the rules while playing in the first couple of sessions as you adjust to the healing mechanics at first (and even then it didn't take that long for my group at the start, maybe ten minutes debating the finer points of treat wounds vs. healing options?), but after that healing takes no more time in PF2E than it does in 5E. Color me confused (and I've run Pathfinder 2E twice a week for the last year).
It is a five minute activity in PF2E. I am not sure where the confusion on the healing rules are coming from. In-game can take longer, as healing has some mechanical impact in terms of how often you can treat wounds and such, but in terms of play time it's a five minute activity.
Pathfinder 2 contains a ridiculous amount of small moving bits.
A Ranger at mid level can have an attack modifier of 0, -2, -3, -4, or more and that's only depending on his own gear and action choices (not any external factors, of which there are nearly always some). Then you roll heapfuls of dice for every attack, and you modify many of them with weaknesses and resistances.
So. Your basic attack modifier is 0, -5, -10 if you spend your round doing three attacks. This is reminiscent of "BAB" from d20 if you remember. (And as you probably know, D&D 5E ignores this and just lets you do each attack at your normal attack bonus)
But Rangers get 0, -3, -6 against targets that they have previously marked. Now then, agile weapons get a special "one less" modifier, so this becomes 0, -2, -4 assuming the Ranger sticks to smaller nimbler weapons (with the agile trait). So far so good.
Now then, all heroes get to choose from class-specific feats and the Ranger can choose
"Twin Takedown" which allows him to attack with both weapons with a single action assuming he wields one weapon in each hand. There is also a feat called
"Dual strike" that pretty much does the same thing, just with completely different specifics. For one thing, it requires two actions, not just one. (Rangers access this feat through multiclassing or archetypes)
Our level 11 Ranger has both these feats. He also has three weapons: one throwing dagger which carries all the magical runes, one hatchet, and one cold iron bastard sword. The dagger and hatchet are agile, the sword is not.
This immediately makes the combinatorics explode.
He can start off a turn making a dagger/hatchet twin takedown attack, with 0, -2 attack modifiers (assuming the target is previously marked). He can then make a dual strike (with the same weapons) with his second action, and the attack penalties are -4, -4 for those attacks. If he takes these two actions in reverse order, we get 0, 0, -4, -4, so that's better (and different). Obviously the damage will be different for each weapon.
Okay so lets do Dual Strike before Twin Takedown in the future. Now imagine he's attacking with dagger/sword instead. The penalties become 0, -2 followed by -4, -6. Wait, what? The dual strike feat (but not the twin takedown feat) specifies that if the second attack is not made by an agile weapon, there's an additional -2 penalty. This explains why the first pair of attack modifiers are 0/-2 instead of the expected 0/0. For the second pair of attack modifiers the extra -2 does not come from this - instead the third attack carries a double -3 penalty for a non-agile attack (always assuming a ranger with a marked target, otherwise we're talking -10) explaining the -6. The -4 is the double -2 penalty for an agile weapon. Okay so he instead does dual strike sword/dagger, twin takedown sword/dagger for 0, 0, -6, -4. Note how the numbers are completely different. (In fact, if you aren't a PF2 rules expert, I don't expect you to be able to follow along. Just go "this sounds extremely fiddly" and that's all I ask of you)
That is just a single very small example. It just scratches the surface of what a single hero has to deal with for each and every combat turn, since the specifics rarely stay the same.
And just to illustrate that, let's say the Ranger starts the combat unarmed. He has the
"Quick-draw" feat, but does that mean he can just skip spending an action on getting his weapons ready. Not at all. Quickdraw lets you spend one (or your three) actions to combine two specific Actions (with a capital A): Interact (to draw one weapon) and Strike (to attack with this weapon). Then you can do that again to draw (and attack with) your second weapon. Neither of these attacks is a Twin Takedown (or a Dual Strike). The main reason for this is that Quickdraw lets you make a Strike, one specific attack action. Twin Takedown is another attack action, not interchangable with Strike.
So for the attack penalties during this round, you won't see 0/0; -4/-4. You might see 0; -2; -4/-4 though.
I've played every edition of D&D from AD&D forward, and when I'm objectively looking at Pathfinder 2, it is definitely one of the most complicated editions. It is also full of clutter, and lots of places where similar things does not work identically. Yes, its better than PF1, but its considerably worse than the chief competitor.
Is it too complicated? Is it a bad game? Is it unplayable? No, no and no. Or, rather, the answer is no for many gamers but not for all gamers. But we're doing newcomers no favors by downplaying what I consider an actual fact - this game is very complex and very complicated.
My personal recommendation is that anyone that doesn't do arithmetic quickly in their head should stay very far away. This is a game where having the excellent Pathbuilder app is a real help for creating your characters. Your GM especially needs to be a number cruncher with attention to loads of small details. It is absolutely not casual.
This is a game where you want to be able to add ten dice (of varying sizes) quickly and easily for almost every turn a hero or monster takes. Each and every single last action will get modified by +2 here, -1 there and probably three more modifiers that might be conditional and not happen all the time. You are asked to desire and pursue every little +1 bonus you can get, through magic items, spells and your very actions in combat. Spending your round on giving every ally a small bonus, or spending your round on stealing maybe as little as a single action from a dangerous monster is regarded as a big win for the team, and not anticlimactic in the extreme.
Every fundamental design philosophy that 5th Edition brought to D&D is ignored or actively opposed, as if 5E didn't even exist.
- 5E tries very hard to keep down the number of rolls (at least for a D&D game). Almost every rule in PF2 seems to be designed by someone who writes as if their little subsystem is the only rule that matters, and therefore should have as many options and dice rolls as possible. See Medicine, Crafting and Recall Knowledge.
- In 5E small bonuses are avoided as cluttering down the game, and forcing players to spend attention on inconsequential benefits that likely won't matter on any given roll. Pathfinder 2 is a game actively constructed to cherish the +1 and -1 modifier. (Especially the critical system accomplishes this)
- The feat system is constructed to enable and encourage maximum bloat. Paizo has already churned out literally one thousand feats! There are countless instances of feats that do pretty much the same thing (or even exactly the same thing!) but there is one minor thing that differentiates them.
- Especially conditional bonuses are limited, since they require players to remember and keep remembering when and where their abilities can be used. Pathfinder 2 wallows in conditional bonuses, with Talismans as the most egregious example of a design that is (and should be!) utterly alien to any good game designer. You're asked to select a weapon, select a Talisman, spend ten minutes of downtime affixing that Talisman to the weapon, remember when and how to use the Talisman, and for what? You might gain half your speed for one single action. You might get a +1 bonus to a single skill use. Then the Talisman is used up and gone. All these extremely underwhelming bonuses might be guarded by requirements that ensure that only the hero than least needs to gain a further bonus is the one that can actually use that bonus. Then you have to complete the combat, spend another round of selecting and affixing, and then you're back to remembering exactly when you can use the new Talisman, and having to decide each and every eligible round whether to use it or save it. It is absolutely atrocious.
I could go on, but I just wanted to establish that PF2 is objectively a much complex game than 5E.
tl;dr: A few of us can handle that load without slowing down. Confusing that for "the games are about the same" is a fundamental mistake.
